Fury is rising within Government over the Justice Secretary’s bungled responses to the furore over fugitive migrant sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif.
Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy is under fire (Image: PA)
A brewing Labour civil war over David Lammy’s disastrous handling of the prisons crisis has this morning been dismissed as “tittle tattle”.
Fury is rising within Government over the Justice Secretary’s bungled responses to the furore over fugitive migrant sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif.
One Cabinet minister accused Mr Lammy of “cowardly” behaviour, adding the Ministry of Justice’s “handling” of the crisis had been “terrible”.
But Housing Secretary Steve Reed says Labour must “get on and do the work and put in the investment that will digitise the system” to prevent prisoners being accidentally released.
And pressure has intensified on the Deputy Prime Minister after new figures revealed the number of violent criminals mistakenly released from prison surged from nine in 2023/24 to 87 in the year to March 2025.\
Ministry of Justice data revealed three sex offenders were wrongly let out.
The number of burglars or thieves wrongly freed trebled from 17 to 52, as did those jailed for possession of weapons, which rose from five to 18.
Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick said: “David Lammy refused to provide the information.
“We now know the number of violent prisoners accidentally released has exploded in the last year. It begs the question: what else is he hiding?
“This fiasco is entirely of Labour’s making. As the former chief inspector of prisons has said, this has been caused in part by Labour’s disastrous early release scheme. Calamity Lammy is completely out of his depth and has no plan to fix it.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, speaking in Brazil, defended Mr Lammy by stating he was “setting out the facts to the best of his knowledge”.
One cabinet minister said of Lammy’s behaviour: “It’s cowardly. He should have fronted up and owned it. I still don’t understand why he didn’t confirm it or make a statement in the Commons. He left it to a junior minister to do the broadcast round this morning. The handling is terrible.”
Another minister said: “The PLP [Parliamentary Labour Party] are deeply unhappy. They think the way he has handled this is awful.”
A senior government source said: “It feels less like a contempt [of parliament] issue, more just rank incompetence and frankly pretty dodgy.”
Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy attends a groundbreaking event for a new prison (Image: PA)
Housing Secretary Steve Reed dismissed criticism of Mr Lammy from fellow ministers as “anonymous tittle tattle”.
He told Times Radio: “The problem is we’ve got a broken system, and you are going to see failings when you have a broken system.
“The key is to make sure we have a digital system so that no prisoner is ever released by mistake.
“There is not an acceptable number for this, but the way to fix it is not tittle tattle about David Lammy in the newspapers, it’s to get on and do the work and put in the investment that will digitise the system.
“David has already had the prison governors in his office yesterday, I imagine they felt pretty hauled over the coals given what’s been going on, but he was also making sure that they’re getting all the support they need to carry out the much tougher checks that will be required to make sure that the repeats of this are at an absolute minimum.”
Kaddour-Cherif, a serial offender accused of thefts, assaults and indecent exposure, was freed because a court warrant for him to be remanded in custody was sent to the wrong prison, HMP Pentonville.
This meant that when prison officers applied Mr Lammy’s new “toughest ever” checks, there was no record of the warrant at HMP Wandsworth, so they mistakenly released him.
